Screening the Past. 18.

Pop music and film. That's the gist of Issue 18 of Screening the Past, though the intro by guest editors Amanda Howell and Cory Messenger can get a little chewy saying so. But minus the parenthetical elaboration: "[A]s varied as they are in their objects of study, these essays have in common an effort to strike a balance between their attention to music's role in the production of meaning in film texts... and their consideration of economic and social contexts and the cultural uses of music."

To shift metaphors, David Baker strikes the first chord (resonating nicely with David D'Arcy's interview with DA Pennebaker just up at our own main site) with a close reading of Don't Look Back. To oversimplify, he unpacks a myth: "Both verité and rock could in the 1960s be understood as asserting a commitment to truth."

The editors: Howell burrows into Blaxploitation; Messenger into "rocksploitation."

Given the current interest in Jia Zhangke, Steve Fore takes on a fascinating subject, the depiction of "youth subcultures" in China in two films made years before Xiao Wu: Tian Zhuangzhuang's Rock Kids (1988) and Zhang Yuan's Beijing Bastards (1993).

Rebecca Coyle and Michael Hannan are "concerned with how, far more than merely accompanying the image track, the music (or musics) in [The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Barry McKenzie Holds His Own] provide/s significant information about Australia in the early 1970s." Delving deeper into the continent: Tony Mitchell on "something of a landmark in Australian cinema," Rowan Woods's The Boys.

Diana Sandars on what separates 90s-era sci-fi from its generic forebears: "Just as the conventions of the musical are reworked through the sci-fi film, the revolutionary aspects of techno music are transported from its warehouse inception to the cinema multiplex."

Anahid Kassabian revisits her book, Hearing Film: Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music, to - bravely - tweak it here and there.

And it's not just the music; this issue strikes home for me twice, personally, touching on both Texas and Berlin. In School of Rock, "[Richard] Linklater has fashioned one of his most trenchant critiques of American youth culture," argues Jeff Smith; and Ken Woodgate explains what few outside Germany are likely to grok right away: Why Sonnenallee was such a hit a few years ago.

There's an intermission of sorts before the issue's dozens of literary reviews by an illustrious host of readers: Belinda Barnet on the Xanadu that doesn't ring a bell.

Posted by dwhudson at August 22, 2005 1:08 AM